Smart home automationWhat Is A Smart Home?What Is A Smart Home?We recently launched a Smart Home category at MakeUseOf, but what is a smart home?Read More has really caught fire these past few years and manufacturers are hopping on the bandwagon while they still can. Smart thermostats, door locks, light bulbs, and so much more — you name it, it’s probably being developed.

According to ABI Research, 1.5 million smart home systems were installed in 2012. In 2017, estimations predict that 8 million systems will be installed. How’s that for rapid adoption? And the best part about smart home automation is that the possibilities are currently endless.

But not all of those possibilities will be winners. There are plenty of products that sound great but simply aren’t feasible or have taken so long to develop that they’re no longer interesting. Here are a few that you probably shouldn’t waste your time waiting for.

On the surface, the SONTE Smart Shade sounds revolutionary. It’s a shade that sits on your window and automatically adjusts between transparent and opaque depending on the amount of light that passes through. The goal is to block out excess light to regulate your home’s temperature.

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So what’s the problem? For starters, the marketing for this product began way back in 2012. It’s been shown every year at the Consumer Electronics Show event and they even ran a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2013. But the product still isn’t ready!

It’s a tall order to make and many, like me, are skeptical about whether CastleHUB can actually accomplish what it promises to do. In fact, if you read their Kickstarter details, it’s the same handful of promises repeated over and over in different ways.

The truth is, several big name smart home hubs already support multiple protocols like Z-Wave, Zigbee, etc. For example, the SmartThings Hub is already very much mix-and-match. As home automation matures, bridging this gap between protocols will become less of a concern, and that means CastleHUB will lose much of its value.

The Kepler is an “intelligent gas and carbon monoxide detector” with several smart features like monitoring, alarms, and notifications. If a leak is detected, an alarm is triggered and alerts arrive on your smartphone.

Their crowdfunding efforts met success in August 2014, which led to the start of mass production in January 2015. Unfortunately, there hasn’t been much news since then, and the product is still unavailable to the public. But here’s the real question: Is it worth waiting for?

Honestly, I don’t think so. The market already has the Nest Protect, which is a smoke and carbon monoxide detector that comes in battery and wired models, and Nest is a stronger smart home brand than Kepler’s company, Orvibo. I wouldn’t wait too long for this one.

Roost Smart Battery

At first, the concept of the Roost Smart Battery actually sounds pretty useful. Rather than buying a bunch of smartened devices to replace what you already have, why not smarten your current devices by inserting a smart battery instead? The execution of Roost, however, is where things fall apart.

The biggest misstep is that it’s specifically marketed as a battery for smoke alarms. Based off of that, you’d probably assume that it only works in smoke alarms. Not only that, you’d probably assume that it offers some nifty features that improve the smoke alarm you already have. Neither of these are true.

Roost will alert your smartphone when your smoke alarm goes off, but the real selling point — at least according to the website — is that it will notify you when the battery is getting low so you don’t have to deal with the endless chirp of a dying smoke alarm.

Is that really enough of a concern to warrant buying a specialized battery? As someone who was lazy enough to suffer through three months of smoke alarm chirping, even I don’t think there’s much value in the Roost. Worst of all, it’s not even available to purchase yet. Should you wait for it? I certainly won’t.

Smart Home: The Good and Bad

As with all markets, the smart home automation market is full of products that are useful, useless, and all manner in between. Before you spend money pre-ordering something that sounds cool, you should consider whether the product is actually worth supporting.

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Tristyn

October 1, 2016 at 11:45 pm

I totally don't understand why you compare the Nest Protect to the Kepler Gas Detector. In fact, you say that the market already has the Nest Protect which detects smoke and carbon monoxide. It doesn't detect gas. The Kepler detects gas. Totally different products that detect different noxious fumes. No similarity at all.

Thank you for covering this issue. I am currently trying out several smart home devices and systems, Schlage Connect door locks, Nest thermostat and smoke/co detectors, Chamberlain Myq garage door opener, Wink hub, Rheem Eco wifi water heater, iRobot vacuum and mopper, Netgear Arlo security camera, and iSmart Alarm system. I've been waiting on the iSmart Alarm doorbell to come out. I just got my new Apple Watch and enjoy discovering all the new smart things that will connect with that.

These are exciting times in the smart home arena, but clearly a huge dose of patience is required on the part of the consumer. One of my fears is that I will invest in a system only to find it obsolete or abandoned. iSmartAlarm is beginning to smell fishy. I have more hope for Arlo; hopefully Netgear values its reputation and will work thru the issues to a great product.

In the meantime thanks again for keeping your readers informed! I depend heavily on your articles and reviews to keep me from buying into a bunch of broken Indigogo promises.

I used to go to the Ideal Home Exhibition (in past years, when this was the only way to see new home technology products) and get excited by all those 'Home of the Future' articles in magazines; I was also an early adopter. I've had buitl-in vacuum cleaners, robot lawnmowers, vacuum cleaners and floor moppers, remote-controlled garage doors and window blinds - and so on and so on, all before anyone else had even heard of them. Did they work? Some didn't, some did - after a fashion..

Now, on the whole, I wait. I wait until other people have been the first-adopters and have reported back on the pros and cons; then I wait some more. Everything but everything is released before all the problems have been ironed out, and so early adopters end up paying. They pay higher prices so that R&D costs can be recouped, and they end up with a product which is flawed and will be out of date very quickly as soon as the next couple of generation of the product appear with the flaws removed (and a few extra knobs and whistles added as sweeteners).

The other main problem with home technology is that it's developed for the perfect house.My first robot lawnmower was tested, apparently, in Israel where lawns were laid from scratch and nurtured lovingly because little grew 'naturally'. So the robot struggled with a wild, centuries-old, English lawn with its bumps, tree roots, animal activity, nooks and crannies. The built-in vacuum cleaner was developed for modular modern properties with removable panels and cavity walls etc., and was consequently difficult to fit in an old country cottage with thick stone walls and, when part of the system gave up, it was impossible to find the fault without extensive excavation. The vagaries of the electricity supply in rural England are often too much for sensitive equipment, and now copper-wire 'broadband' is too hit-and-miss for it too.

So, while in my dreams I still have a 'home of the future', the reality is that I'm a slightly disillusioned and delaying adopter of its technology. Perhaps when I'm very, very old and have to move back into a metropolis and a purpose-built flat...